'The Pact 2' doesn't hold much promise

By By Robert Abele

Oct 30, 2014 | 3:45 PM

An image from the film "The Pact 2." (Ron Batzdorff)

The 2012 horror film "The Pact" was a crisply made haunted house movie that benefited from its grab-bag approach: scares real and imagined, old-style creeps and trendy gore, eerie silences and noisy shocks.

That movie's survivor, Annie Barlow (Caity Lotz), who discovered she's the niece to the Judas Killer, returns for the more-of-the-same sequel "The Pact 2," but only after we're introduced to a newly terrorized heroine named June (an appealing Camilla Luddington). June is no pushover: She cleans crime scenes and draws violent graphic comics, and she has a protective cop boyfriend (Scott Michael Foster).

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But some freaky murder dreams tied to a recent spate of Judas copycat killings drive June to connect some bloody dots and enlist the investigatory aid of Judas' killer, Annie.

Writer-directors Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath, picking up the baton from first film creator Nicholas McCarthy, do a serviceable job aping the original's clean, mostly lo-fi atmospherics and nervy framing (even if every indoor scene in June's Craftsman house appears to be lighted by dusk). The story's a wash, though, with a twist that won't surprise, and Patrick Fischler's role as the creepy FBI agent is too obvious a puzzle piece.

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"The Pact 2"

MPAA rating: None.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Playing: Arena Cinema, Hollywood.

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